Living the Word How to Engage in Missionary Work in a Non Imperial Manner Essay

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Pastoral Theology: The Modern Role of Mission Work in the Church

Historically, mission work played a critical role in the establishment of the Christian Church. Christians were called to spread Christianity beyond their initial groups of worshippers and the concept of the mission to spread religion gradually developed over time. Over the course of history, these missions have taken varying forms, though mission work has frequently combined the provision of some type of help with introductions to the basic tenets of Christianity. Modern mission work continues to combine these two elements, but in varying ways. Christians are no less called to spread the Gospel than they were in the early days, when Christianity was a new religion and unknown to many of the people of the world. Spreading the Gospel is about more than giving people information about Christianity; for mission workers, spreading the Gospel is about letting people know what it is to live those Christian principles.

In addition, because Christians are called to spread the gospel, the reality is that all Christians should be mission workers in their daily lives. While this approach appears to be clearly designated by Scripture, for many years the political aspects of the church had greater importance than the religious aspects of the church. Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, had power structures that essentially made some churches subordinate to others. The churches that were in power sent workers to churches with less power or to areas that did not yet have a church presence. The result was a form of Christianity that was centered outside of the communities where it was practiced. This was a change from early Christianity, which was extremely community based and not dependent upon that same centralized location of power. The shift back to local practice began in the 1950s and had three basic tenets: the church and the mission were inseparable; every Christian community is a mission; and churches are equal partners with one another (Bosch 1991, p.370). While this ideal has not been fully achieved, there has certainly been a shift in the way that the governing bodies of various Christian churches approach mission work, which has made it more community centered and less political.

However, any discussion of mission work would be incomplete if it failed to acknowledge that some historical efforts labeled as mission work have merely been excuses to exercise racist and prejudicial dogma against groups of easily-oppressed people. The history of mission not only includes introducing Christ to new bodies of people, but also the misuse of Christian theology to oppress and enslave. The root cause of this been a critical error which has substituted the church and Christianity for God. The church does not exist to be a self-perpetuating entity. "The point of the church is rather to point beyond itself, to be a community that preaches, serves, and witnesses to the reign of God" (Bevans & Schroeder 2004, p.7). Therefore, when contemplating any type of mission work, the most critical issue that a pastor must consider is whether the mission work will preach, serve, and witness to the reign of God. Mission work that would deny the humanity of the people being helped, that exists solely to promote the spread of the church, or even that conditions helping on religious conversion fails to fulfill all three categories. Therefore, while the inculturation of Christian theology is a valid goal of missionary work, a missionary should be wary of the other types of inculturation that are goals of that work.

Furthermore, any modern missionary work has to look at the relative political and socioeconomic power of the missionaries in comparison with those to whom the missionaries are preaching. It is impossible to view missionary work in a vacuum as if religion is somehow separate and distinct from the lived experiences of people. In fact, it is not even desirable to do so. At its heart, Christianity is meant to be a lived religion. Therefore, all true mission work begins with Christians living the principles of Christianity. Furthermore, introducing a Westernized concept of Christianity, which requires rejecting traditional cultural behaviors and norms, to indigenous people is unlikely to result in a group of people who are able to live Christianity. Instead, there will be schism between religion and daily practice that will continue the profound inequalities that tend to exist between missionaries and the people they seek to convert.

While there is no simple fix to the problems that were created or exacerbated by dated approaches to mission work, the fact that mission work helped perpetuate some social inequalities and was linked to colonial habits and patterns does not invalidate the value of modern mission work. Rather than modeling modern missionary efforts on missions in recent historic times, the concept of mission should reflect back to the origins of the Christian church (Senior & Stuhlmueller 1983).

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The original Christian missionaries were those Jews who had followed Jesus during his lifetime. Their missionary work would not be recognizable if placed in the context of modern missions. Rather than going into disadvantaged groups to elevate them, the early missionaries were, in many ways, their own disadvantaged group. They were originally Jews, but as Christianity developed, it became increasingly difficult to both remain a devout Jew and believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Although Messianic Jews have always formed some portion of the broader Christian community, it became clear that Christians needed to become a separate religious group. Therefore, these early Christians were often in the position of seeking refuge in new communities, where they continued to share the Gospel despite the risks they faced when self-identifying as early Christians. Despite the fact that Christians are persecuted in some parts of the world today, with Christianity as one of the world's major religions, modern Christians are not in the same position of vulnerability as early Christians. However, that paradigm shift does not mean that Christians cannot continue to approach mission work in the same way as some of those early Christians, by integrating into broader cultural communities and by encouraging dialogue and communication with those to whom they wish to preach.

In fact, modern missionaries are beginning to embrace something that was ground-breaking during Jesus' lifetime: cultural inclusion. While it was possible for a Gentile who lived during the times described in the New Testament to convert to Judaism, the conversion required a complete cultural change. Jesus, Himself, initially preached solely to Jews. However, as the message spread to Gentiles, a shift occurred whereby people could identify as Christians without first identifying as Jews. In fact, the Christian identity and core beliefs were far more central to their religious understanding than the Jewish history and beliefs, so that while an understanding of the Old Testament history of Christianity is important, it is not fundamental to the person who embraces Christianity. For this reason, early Christianity became a broadly encompassing religion with room for participants from a variety of cultural backgrounds and should not be limited to Westernized cultural norms.

In fact, mission work requires the missionary to interact with other religions and spiritual perspectives (Dorr 2000). This attitude reflects a paradigm shift in the approach to foreign mission work that cannot be misunderstood. Missionaries were once directed to encourage people to reject their current cultural and religious beliefs out of hand in favor of embracing Christianity. While this approach may have resulted in high numbers of religious converts, it did not result in as many meaningful conversions and true Christians. Now, missionaries are encouraged to be more open-minded and discuss religion and cultural norms with people, which provides greater opportunities to preach the Gospel and show, rather than tell, why the Gospel is the one true way. Modern mission work is about spreading the example of Christ to others, therefore mission work should be guided by a principle that has become trite in modern parlance, but that should still resonate deeply with Christians: "What would Jesus do?"

In fact, this basic question brings to mind the most elemental form of missionary work: the personal mission. There has been a shift in meaning when one discusses the concept of mission, so that many Christians believe that they have to go somewhere and do something outside of their normal lives in order to participate in mission work. However, the concept of mission was not ever intended to be something so rigid or fixed, nor was it meant to require people to go to foreign lands and preach only to those who were not previously exposed to the gospel. Mission work can refer to any type of calling that encourages people to spread Christianity through a combination of preaching and service (Dorr 2000). This is a very evangelical approach to Christianity, but one that deserves merit and consideration. Mission work that focuses on feeding the hungry in one's own community is every bit as worthy of consideration and effort as mission work that takes one to foreign lands.

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